Choosing the Light

Every issue of Please See Me usually begins with a call for submissions based on a health-related theme in need of exploration and elevation. We never know who will submit, what type of stories, essays, poetry and art will arrive, and what inspiring conversations or personal growth will come from working with our authors. Our ninth issue was an open call for the first time, and the health-related topics contained within are wide-ranging and interconnected. They include assisted suicide and end-of-life care; physician burnout and mental health; the unthinkable loss of a child to suicide; the choosing of funeral songs; addiction, over-exercising to the point of injury, and living with chronic pain and illness; and the continued inequities that exist in the treatment of patients because of biases around race, disability, and age.

Speaking with authors and poets for this issue, I’ve ridden the roller coasters of their lives alongside them in search of finding a better word, metaphor, or linking of ideas to help build the best version of their stories. Every person I’ve worked with across the last three years has been gracious and eager to partner in the editorial process, and I believe we have grown as writers, editors, and humans as a result. This is an end-of-year shout-out to those I’ve personally had the pleasure of working with over these last nine issues as well as those who have worked with our small but mighty team of volunteer editors. Thank you for allowing us to wander in your worlds!

In this issue, read nonfiction by Zinaria Williams, MD, “Borderless Dreams,” and be inspired by her resolve to stay in medicine despite its dysfunctional culture so that she could provide the best possible care for her patients. She writes that it was by learning to understand her patients’ stories that she was able to return to the person and physician she wanted to be. “Henk’s Choice,” by Hanne Jensen, honors both a dear friend and the right to choose how we live and die. And A.L. Gordon’s “Echoes” reminds readers of the devastating loss all too often associated with mental illness.

In our poetry section, listen to Marceline White read “My Son Studies the Stars,” a poem that uses the ethereal to ground listeners in the pain and joy that coincide with raising a child who lives with illness. Christine Himmelfarb reads “What Holds,” a collection of wordplay and images that imprints her loss and gratitude for her living children, as well as the two she miscarried, on the soul of the reader. And finally, hear returning poet Paul Hostovsky, a sign language interpreter, who in “Deaf and Dumb” shows us how much we miss when failing to see the person beneath a disability.

In our fiction section, you’ll find Cristina Legarda’s “In The Chillest Land,” where her characters play out the destruction of addiction within families. And in “A Dreadful Case,” Barbara Ridley again examines how people with disabilities are all too often dismissed and assumed to be less than by others, including healthcare professionals.

Every writer contained within this issue addresses a challenge or trigger in their environment that had the potential to throw each of them off course. In their writing, they show us that it is ultimately each one of us who chooses how we live. They remind us that life is not without struggle, but if we’re willing to ask for help, to embrace a new course or version of the self, it may be all the richer for it. Through their prose, they show us that if we make space for others to fail, we too can fail and get back up with grace and dignity. By being open to having the healing conversations that follow, we can change and evolve and do the difficult soul-searching which allows us to rise above despite our environment. We can always choose to see, and be, the light.

See you in 2022 with our annual Spring Mental Health Awareness Writing Contest and a call for submission with the theme of Women’s Health.

Happy holidays!

Tracy Granzyk is the editor in chief of Please See Me.